how do we do that? it is not just by saying listen to what i say, i am your leader, i am your representative. -- he was looking at his mansion where those people going?after all i am their leader. so today, we need to drill down. and said come let us reason together. it has to be recognition that there is more that unites us than divides us. >> this memorial in downtown richmond pays tribute to the virginia statute for religious freedom. enacted by the state general assembly on january 16, 1086 and penned by thomas jefferson.

it addresses the principle of separation and church and state. the three paragraph statute is the basis for our first amendment protections for religious freedom. up next, we learn about another founding father in the financial scandal that landed him in prison. robert morris was an important american founder. it is true that not many people know about him. he was the financier of the american revolution so-called because he served as the superintendent of finance towards the end of the american revolution. he really helped that early government on a sound financial footing when it was a big trouble at the end of the war. he was a moneyman.he was also not very well known because of what happened to him at the end of his life. he messed up pretty bad. he was one of the richest guys in the country. after the american revolution, he was a very important senator from pennsylvania.

at the end of his life, he ended up losing basically all of his fortune and went into debtor's prison. when he came out of debtor's prison, the country did not have very fond feelings for him. and so he ended up being more or less forgotten for the next few generations. i like to tell the story of robert morris as something like rags to riches and then back to rags again. because he started off pretty humble. he was born in liverpool in england. we do not think his parents were married originally. his dad ended up coming over to america as a tobacco after, they worked in the tobacco industry. and so he was brought over as a 13 or 14-year-old boy to live with his father in maryland. and ended up not liking maryland. and wanted to go to the big city and said his father arranged for robert morris to move up to philadelphia. once he settled in philadelphia he found his niche. he ended up apprenticing at a merchant firm and proved to be

a prodigy when it came to trading and accounting and doing all of the things that merchants were doing at the time. he relates quickly and achieved partner any firm when he was quite young. he did not have a lot of formal education, it was pretty much on the job. that was characteristic of him throughout his life. he was not one of the most intellectual of cerebral founders. he was the guy that likes and he had kind of a common touch as well. he liked to drink, he liked to eat, he liked to sing songs of the problems with his club friends. and so he was more of a rowdy rougher around the edges founder than most of us think of when we think of that set of folks. he was less of a politician in what we traditionally think of the term. when the big question of independence finally came in

1776, whether to sign the declaration of independence or support that movement and so robert morris was i would say hesitant about declaring independence. he did not think it was something that would be helpful in the short term. he thought maybe in the long term it would be something to work towards. and so he was not, he took himself out of the meeting when it came time to actually vote for independence. but in the next month or so when they brought the declaration around for signatures he signed on and pledged his fortune for the war effort and participate in with everyone else. as we know philadelphia was a key city for initiating the american revolution. so with the continental congress was meeting and where a lot of the american trade was taking place. and so in the congress started meeting there and when

pennsylvania started to think about what was going to do in terms of prices with great britain, he was swept into that as a rich guy.as a merchant you had something to say about how trade was going to happen or not going to happen. and so he ended up being a member of the continental congress quite early. he was also active in the colony or state politics once the state had declared its independence. and so he was important for the continental congress early on because he was one of those traders that the conquests have to help them find arms and ammunition to the war effort. the colonies up and down the east coast did not have a big army or a big navy ready to go. and so they needed to find those kinds of supplies to make the war effort happen. and so he was tapped as one of those, behind the scenes workers that were arranging for loans and for weapons and for supplies to make the war effort go. there is an anecdote, i do not

know if it is true or not but is symbolically true and that when one of the generals was looking for ammunition and there was no ammunition to be had, one of morse's ships came in and morris was able to find -- another anecdote that is told by him during the war that personifies his approach to keeping the war effort going was when the soldiers were headed towards you, let's pause and put in a little bit of anything to say they did not want to go any further without getting paid. they had not been paid for months. so morris was able to receive hard money from the french that he was able to borrow and take on directly to the soldiers so they would have paid enough to take to their families so they could continue on to yorktown and ultimately winning the war. but mostly how he helped with the war effort was providing

money for it. finding loans either among the american population or abroad with france for the netherlands or spain or some of the other countries that were willing to loan the government money so they were able to pay their bills. we are all pretty much familiar with what he continental dollar is worth and it was not worth very much. and so they needed to make constant supply of funding and loans in the army and the field really. george washington had a lot of patients as commander-in-chief. so he had a great paper first and that he would always approach congress and try to let them know what a dire situations army was and what needs they had to continue fighting. congress was not very well organized in terms of providing that kind of supplies and funding that the army really

needed.they basically relied on a voluntary donation basis to make sure the children had enough to run on and states were always running behind what they were supposed to provide. and so washington would often times trying to morris personally as a way to appeal to someone within the congress and then when morris became superintendent of finance, especially for the end of the work, someone who could move the levers of government and provide the army with the kind of resources in needed when the committees or general congress itself for states more largely, one able to provide that kind of support. and so washington was not very close to a lot of people throughout his life. he was very famous for being standoffish, as keeping counsel to himself, as being a little bit ãbut he seemed to let his guard down around robert morris. i think you found a soul that he felt like he could trust that had been there when he really needed it.

i think we could consider morris oddly, when george washington's closest friends. when the war was over, he was quite relieved. he did not think he could get out the position he was in fast enough. at the end of the war or the last 1781 to 1784, he served as superintendent of finance. it was really the most important minister of the congressional government at the time. there was no president under the articles of confederation. and so he had his hands full. he cannot mute all of the obligations that were coming in at him and so he did his best to organize it but it was a frustrating position. he was not ever one that had a real appetite for politics to begin with. he did not see himself as a statements, he did not like to give speeches on things. it was not really his ambition. he was very ambitious but it was more in terms of his own personal empire, his checkbook,

his balance sheet and all of his friends that he like to associate with. and so once the peace came and he felt like he had provided a sound financial footing for the federation government the best he could, he was very happy to move into private begin.so private life for morris meant being incredibly busy in almost every arena of the economy. he was involved from the earliest trades in china from america directly. in city finance the early chinese wages for trade. he was very active in a factory complex that was on the balls of the delaware river where he had various clothing and now making and breweries and other kind of industrial operations there. he was paying debts, government debt and the private currency of the time. and he was still a merchant in some way, when his guilt is ã what he built his fortune on. he felt it was a very optimistic time for america, a country that had a very bright

future. he could not wait to kind of ã provide himself with the resources that would surely increase in value which would be all of these millions and millions of ãthat had opened up for the united states and most of the fortune and most of the energies were put into acquiring millions of acres of land. if you. >> c-span: at the time when he is making all of these incredible purchases and on top of the world he signed him until that was like nothing else it has ever been built in america really. the closest parallel to it would be just president's house. in washington d.c.. but we now for the white house. before that in philadelphia, the very majority people lived in what we call courthouses. they were phenomenally appointed, they were beautiful, lots of living space but looked more or less uniform throughout

the city and that it was a regular streetscape. morrissey said he wanted something much different than that. so he bought an entire city block of land. about two blocks away from the houses of congress. and where the state government met. and he hired the engineer that designed the city washington d.c. to design this house for him. and the two came up with an incredible design. it was a parisian based mansion really. a palace - is what people called it. it was going to be wider than the pennsylvania state house. it was going to be bigger than any other house in the city. and is started construction just as morris's affairs really start to unravel. but morris still felt like he could build the thing and so they constructed the house over a period of about five years. for five years.

and it got as high as ruth and it was an incredible roof itself. it was a french style that really had not been built in america before. and the workers that were building it were italian stonemasons, stone carvers, they were plasterers, local philadelphia carpenters and brick masons and just dozens and dozens of workers that work season after season on this house. the irony of it all was that morris's family were never able to live in the house. just as it was about to be able to be open for the family, morris lost all his money and went to prison.so it was something that the locals ended up calling morrison's folly. so the house ended up standing in for really morrison's financial poor decisions. and so the house became a symbol for morrison's failed ambition. because it was never really completed and it was torn down

shortly afterwards.and so rather than proceeding at a more cautious place trying to wrap up some of these and he keeps on them. and so he starts to really get trouble i would say in a significant way in 1790 may 17, 1996 where he and one of his partners, a guy named john nicholson and up basically creating their own type of currency. they call them m&ms after morris and mickelson's. and they tried to sign for each other checks that they would then try to pay their creditors for. as a trying to do this, over a period of a year or two they had thousands and thousands of dollars that they essentially created chat after a short period of time was the deal was real money logos with real credit. in the ended up being a spiral that he and his partner could not get out of. so by 1797 things have gotten so bad for morris that he actually retreated out of his family's home in the center philadelphia.

and left to live on his country estate outside of town about three miles up the school river. and he retreated into his home there and the shirts were trying to apprehend him and bring him to debtors prison but there was a will that said the sheriff could not break and enter into someone's private home. as long as he was behind the barn doors, he could maintain his operations. any thought again, they could keep himself out of this, that the tide would soon turn. it was just around the corner that his credit with, back again but by 1798, in february he ran out of time and saw the writing on the wall and eventually gave himself up to the sheriff and went to debtors prison. his friends stuck with him throughout. even make friends in prison. this was a guy it was very gregarious. limp people and could not even

make new friends while displaced in prison. his most famous friend of course remained george washington. in 1798 shortly after morris had been in prison, washington was back in philadelphia out of retirement to take over for to help train united states army because of tensions with france at the time. and one of washington's stocks in the city when he was in philadelphia was to go visit his old friend robert morris in debtors prison. we know that the two had a meal there and with robert morris his wife and his daughter. and so we can only imagine that scene with george washington here, this general, the president seated inside of morris's cell and the debtor department. a kind of bittersweet reunion that it must've been. at the same time washington was concerned to do the right thing. concerned to follow the laws of the country. answer never sought to do anything that would go against what put morris in debtors prison in the first place.

and so washington never took any direct steps to try and free morris from prison. and neither did really any of his other friends as well. he was on his own at that point. in 1801, he got out of prison and he was tremendously relieved in the end. he decided it was a good thing to be out of prison rather than to be in prison. robert morris occasionally tried to break back into the merchant business. or the banking business or land business. but he was never really able to get anything off the ground. it is kind of ironic, what his, political enemies -- thomas jefferson -- jefferson acknowledged that morris was

still a disgrace and would be really impossible to point morris to his cabinet. but the first thing that, there are some good feelings towards morris's abilities but also skepticism as to his reputation and his fate. it is a weird moment for robert morris and that his protcgc, alexander hamilton, we all know about the broadway play. it has been spectacular and created an large amount of interest in alexander hamilton. and there in the shadows remains robert morris. there hasn't been a lot of studies about him. is one of the things that drew me to a study of morris. and to his house which no one had really spent much time studying either. i tried to focus on a particular element of the last part of his life. and again the house. we can understand not only

morris but the challenges that america face overall in the 1790s. and frankly that we still face today. this question of what the richest americans of their fellow citizens? are there limits on what the richest americans can or should be able to do? and so morrison's life condemned particularly and help show how americans have thought about that question. >> continuing our look at richmond, this is the cities famed monument avenue with statues honoring confederate war heroes including robert e lee, thomas stonewall jackson and jefferson davis. in 1996, african-american tennis star and richmond native arthur ashe was added to the conversation. -- up next, we speak with kristen green on the right to desegregate prince edward